2023-12-18 18:38:44
Ruins of a mudbrick structure near the town of Lusanga along the Kwilu River. Peter Coutros (Ghent University)
DECRYPTION – A genetic study looked at the population movements which allowed these languages, spoken by 350 million people, to spread across the entire southern half of the continent.
More than 350 million people around the world speak one (or more) of the 500 languages of the Bantu family. Mainly of oral culture, these languages are practiced in Africa over a wide area, from Gabon to the east coast of the continent and further south to the tip of South Africa. A new study led in particular by Carina Schlebusch, geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden, published in the magazine Nature relies on genetic analyzes to understand how the language spread across the African continent.
In the same way that Europe has experienced numerous waves of settlement, Africa has also had a turbulent history. About 6,000 years ago, groups who spoke Bantu languages began a migration through the Congo rainforest into eastern Africa, eventually occupying almost the entire southern part of the continent. These groups took with them their know-how, but also their language.
Thousands of years…
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